1990年代是处于电子与数码之间的过渡媒介时代，Basic语言和C语言开始取代传统劳动分工，两个世纪之间的末日预言催促了奇幻时刻。而网络媒介的转变在体通俗小说的文体中也可见一斑。
媒体的代际更替并非严丝合缝。我们作为历史的主体，身体往往携带着这些新旧交替时刻的深刻烙印；那些过渡性的媒体，远远比当下稳固的技术现实对我们的影响更为深远与隐秘。上海外滩美术馆正在展出的艺术家彭祖强个展“一些省略、静默和不透明的声音”中，近代历史出现过的短时媒体与其作为情感载体的形式互相影响。其中，展出作品《似曾相识》也从基于文本的视听入手，通过混杂错乱的多重感官经验，打乱回忆与身体感觉的真实性。
媒介史学者王洪喆将基于日本学者山本明对“单元化”问题的考察，带来讲座“节奏的幽灵：1990年代的代码与过渡性媒介”。王洪喆以90年代一系列跨媒介文本为例，如1998年的网络文学作品《第一次的亲密接触》，来呈现处于电子与数码过渡期的特殊媒介与文学形式，并尝试进一步论证早期编程语言和90年代劳动分工、文学结构和情感意识的关系。王洪喆的研究提出，早期互联网上流行的频繁换行、左对齐、忽略标点且以“单元”收束的叙事风格，其物理逻辑并非源于诗歌，而是源于Telnet/BBS系统的屏幕滚动机制与早期编程语言的逻辑语法结构。这种文体表现出一种“离散化”的审美，每一行文字就像是一条执行指令，而“单元”之间的空白行则构成了逻辑块（Code Block）的分界点，由此，世纪之交汉字互联网的独特媒介形式重构了一种文学可感知的节奏。
As part of the public program for Peng Zuqiang's solo exhibition Short-term Histories, Rockbund Art Museum welcomes the media scholar Wang Hongzhe to present his lecture "Phantom Rhythms: Transitional Media of the 1990s and Its Encodings". The ubiquity of 'transitional media' in the 1990s indexed the era's technological and political shifts; a history which is still felt today.
During this time, computer programming languages like BASIC and C demonstrated how digital technologies could supplant human labor. Here, a wide range of writers, scholars, and artists issued apocalyptic warnings as to the potential consequence of voracious technological innovation, which altogether spurred a sense of the fantastical and dystopian in the creative and intellectual discourses of the time.
Drawing on Japanese scholar Akira Yamamoto’s conceptualization of “modularization,” Wang's lecture focuses on the confluence and cross-pollination of media and literary forms in the 1990s—a period of transition from the electronic to the digital—to explore the relationship between early programming languages and the division of labor, literary structures, and the emotional consciousness of the 1990s.